Time (LP)

Rod Stewart

Amoeba Review

05/06/2013

For the past ten years, soul survivor Rod Stewart has been belting out the classics -- lending his unmistakeable smoky rasp to five albums of American songbooks, one of rock oldies and one of R&B oldies, and even a set of Christmas tunes. It works because like Willie Nelson or Ray Charles, he's a great interpreter: he could sing the phone book and it'd be soulful as hell. On his newest, Time, it seems he's finally gotten the oldies out of his system, and he's ready to sing about his present. As a 68-year old rock & roll barnacle, that means he's no longer the spiky-haired young hell-raiser kicking you out of his bed in the morning; he's a regular guy who's acting his age, who's glad to have enjoyed so much of life and glad to still have those simple pleasures of love, health and companionship (which aren't so easy to hold onto as it looks). On these self-penned tunes, he relates the ups and downs of his declining years in wonderfully charming cadences, and one thing he's learned in all his years of adventuring is that the good times are really timeless. Who else could give aging this much rock n' soul?